


But Then the Guns Fell Silent

by farad



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 06:26:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farad/pseuds/farad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for the Daybook prompt "Maude, OW, Letters from the Front Line".</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Then the Guns Fell Silent

**Author's Note:**

> Un-betaed, all mistakes my own; this is my second attempt to see if I can remember how to write, and how to write a comment fic.

"I think she's all right," Nathan said, but his voice was grim. "But I can tell you, this ain't the first time this has happened. I've seen this sort of thing before – like her body just gives out. Did you see how she dropped?"

Ezra held his mother's hand, her fingers cold against his skin. Or maybe it was because he, himself, was hot, his skin flushed with worry for her. "Of course I saw," he said, his tone sharper than he'd intended. "I was looking right at her." 

He had been – they'd been arguing, as usual, about why she was in town, what she wanted this time, about the letters from Preston Wingo claiming she had violated their agreement. About the Judge's statement that she had to honor the agreement or go back to jail. 

He'd been looking right at her, pleased at the high flush in her usually flawless complexion, pleased at the way her lips drew back to show her teeth when she was truly angry. He'd gotten to her, he knew it, had been relishing this rare victory, when she had straightened, like a ramrod, drawn a breath deep enough to challenge the tiny buttons of her bodice, then suddenly deflated, the air rushing out of her as though she were a bellows being pushed together. She had crumpled at the same time, her legs giving way under her and her body turning as it went down. Only Vin's quick reflexes had kept her head from hitting the floor.

"Looked like she's done this before, like she knew what was coming. She didn't go straight back, didn't fall on her face, either," Nathan said, his tone low. "Bet that if you go to her room and check through her things, you'll find a tincture of laudanum or, on the other hand, a tincture of cocaine, to bring her blood pressure up. Be best if we know now which one it is – I'd hate to treat her with the opposite of what she's been taking. Might make things worse."

Ezra stared at his mother. She was too pale now, the flush from earlier long gone. She was so still that he found himself looking for the rise and fall of her chest, which was harder to see, the bodice of her dress unnaturally wrinkled in the wake of her collapse. 

"We can go," another voice said, and Ezra was distantly aware of Chris standing in the doorway of Nathan's clinic, Vin to one side of him. "We're looking for bottles, like the ones you hand out to people?"

"Yeah, probably like that," Nathan said, his voice fading in and out of Ezra's hearing. But in some part of his mind, he knew this wouldn't work. He couldn't let them paw through his mother's things – not that he really thought they'd mistreat him but . . . 

He drew a deep breath, feeling his chest press against the fabric of his shirt and vest. "No, I will go. I thank you for your kind offer, but I suspect Mother would never forgive me if I allowed anyone to look through her intimate things." He stared for a few seconds more, reassuring himself that she was, indeed, breathing, before he pushed himself up from the bed. It was only when he was standing, bending over her, that he finally let go of her hand, laying it carefully at her side. Not over her chest, that was impossible to do, but at her side. 

"I'll go with you if you want," Chris offered, and Ezra reluctantly turned to look at the other man. 

"Thank you," he said, finding that he really meant it. "But I think I should do this myself. I would be in your debt, however, if you would stay here and notify me of even the slightest change. I shouldn't wish to be absent should she need me."

Chris didn't say anything but his gaze, while direct, was unusually soft, and he nodded. It was only later, as he hurried across the street to the hotel that Ezra recalled that Chris had lost his wife and never had this possibility with her, to have to choose between staying with her in a state of emergency or going off to retrieve some information that might or might not help her. 

That was a passing thought though, a concern that he relegated to the back of his mind as he pushed through the door of the hotel and want to the front desk. "I need the key to my mother's room," he said without preamble, only vaguely concerned about his lack of manners. 

Word must have reached this far, though, for Mr. Harkness produced it almost immediately and with little question, only a whispered, "I hope she's well," as he relinquished it to Ezra. 

Ezra hurried up the stairs, barely acknowledging the people he passed. His mother's room was on the first floor, toward the back, and he had no trouble getting in. But as he pushed open the door, he was hit by the scent of sandlewood, her prefume. He barely managed to stand his ground, forcing himself not to flee back into the hall, forcing himself to remember that she was still breathing, lying in that bed in Nathan's clinic. 

He steadied himself, looking about the room. He knew his mother's habits well, knew that anything truly important would be hidden away in a valise that would not be easy to find. With that in mind, he moved first to the wardrobe, sorting through the various dresses, skirts, blouses, and coats hung there, searching between them for a disguised bag or other case that would hold her more personal things. 

No luck. 

He searched the corners of the wardrobe, then the top of it, finding nothing. With a sigh, he stepped back and looked about the room. The dresser was too obvious, as was under the bed. But . . . he paused, looking up. The bed was a four-poster, with a cloth canopy over it. He stepped up to the bed, looking up carefully. In the late afternoon, the angle of the sun coming into the room was low – hell, this room, facing south, rarely had a direct light from the sun, even though it had two wide windows. Which meant . . . 

He stepped up onto the bed, using the wide board of the canopy frame to hold himself up. The bed was tall, enough so that he had to stretch to see, but when he did, he could just make out the shape of a dark object in the corner, at the far corner of the foot of the bed. 

Ezra made his way around the bed to it, curious as to how his mother had gotten it there and how she had planned to get it down – it was no easy feat. But then, his mother had always been one to astound him when he gave her a moment's consideration, and he made a conscious effort to try to remember to ask her, later. 

For now, though, he pulled down the brown bag, one he knew well. It was worn and scratched, the leather so old and weathered that it was soft as silk to his touch. 'My secret stash,' she called it, 'the place where I keep myself'. 

She had often held it up to him when he was young and traveling with her, explaining that it was the one most important bag they had to keep up with. In it was their money, their paper, their means of escape. And it was there that he had assumed he would find any medicine that she needed to take.

He dropped onto the bed, sitting so that the bag was in his lap. He wasn't surprised to find cloth on top – an old trick, his mother had often told him, to put the more intimate of a woman's clothes on top. Most men would be so uncomfortable with a woman's intimate wear, if it wasn't on her, that is, that they'd be reluctant to go any further. 

Ezra had to admit that even though he knew the ruse, it was still quite unsettling to be touching the soft satin and lace intimate wear that a woman wore – well, in places he knew little of. It was all the more disconcerting to think of it on his mother. To think of his mother as having those intimate places - 

He tossed the cloth aside, refusing to consider it any more. Instead, he looked into the bag, seeing beneath the clothing a sheath of folded papers, bound in a purple ribbon. Pulling them out, he glanced through them, expecting bank notes – and surprised, instead, to recognize letters. No, not just letters, but . . . 

He stared, unable to put them down. For he recognized these pages, or, more to the point, he recognized the hand writing. It was his own. 

The sense of urgency, of needing to get back to Nathan, weighed on him, but not enough to overcome the curiosity, and the perverse, almost frightening need to see what he had written that his mother – his cold, calculating mother – had kept. The woman who taught him how to think first of himself, always, because no one else would. 

No one. Yet here in his lap, spilling out of the ribbon that barely contained them, were letters, most of them thick, multiple pages no longer trapped in their envelopes but instead folded together, the pages worn from many readings. 

He lifted one of them, the pages barely crinkling as he opened them. The writing was so familiar, elegant and fluid, as he wrote even now, though the date was April 12, 1862. During the war. 

The war. It had been his way of breaking away, of being his own man – hell, of being a man. Of doing what he needed to do as a man, not as her son, not as her grifter in training. He had made the decision to go, joining up before she knew, before she could stop him. He had waited until he was far away, in training for the fight, before he'd written her. 

And he'd written her as often as he could, usually on the nights before he'd gone into battle, on the nights when he'd been sure that he was going to die the next day. 

When he'd wanted to let her know that he'd loved her, and appreciated all the things she'd done for him. It had taken the war, the battles, the loss of friends, the fear of losing his own life or worse, the fear or returning as a cripple or a dependant that she would have to care for. It was then that he understood what she had done for him. 

Not that he would admit it now. Because she had never once responded to the letters he had written. In truth, he had come to believe that she had never recived them, that they had been lost in the chaos and confusion of the battles themselves. 

Yet here they were. He found himself looking through them, finding the dates, putting them in order. The first one was – his first one, from the training camp. There was strange discolorations on it, splotches that were darker than the paper, some of them in areas where the ink had run. Rain marks, perhaps, some sort of water splatter.

He was tempted to read them, found himself caught in his own words as he skimmed them – "red mist from the cannon fire", "my friend James almost died, they had to amputate his leg", "I miss you, I fear that I may never see you again" – his stomach clenched at the memories, and the fear. At the pain. 

And at the realization that all this time, his mother had had them. She had read them. She had known. 

And she had never once said anything. 

He stared at them in his lap, in his hands. The discoloration was there on all of them, the water marks, and he wondered how often she had left them in the rain. 

It wasn't why he was here. He was here for the medicine, and he knew he had to find it, had to get past this, these letters that his mother had never spoken of. 

Had to get past the mystery of what it meant that she still had them, after all this time.

The bag was at his side, and he reached for it. The letters had been on top of a number of vials, jars, and bottles. Most of them he knew before he even saw them – make-ups, unguents for her skin, perfume, the variations of the scent that had greeted him when he opened the door. 

But one of the bottles lacked the elaborate decorations of the others and when he studied it, he saw the fine scrawl of a doctor's instructions on it. 'Take in the event of anxiety, five drops in half a dipper of water'. At the bottom of the pale label was written 'tincture of cocaine, 20 parts to 100 parts of water'. 

It was what he had come for. It was what he needed to get back to Nathan. But as he leaned forward to push himself off the bed, he found himself looking once more at the letters. All this time she had had them, these letters from him. She had kept them. Perhaps she had only used them to protect her other goods, her other secrets, using them as a layer between her intimate clothing and her unguents, her perfumes. 

Her money. For he knew that under it all, she hid her gold coins, her cash, her jewels. They were in the lining of the case, under the floor on which the bottles rested. In the pockets that no one would find by accident. The letters might mean nothing to her, just a way to appear as a concerned mother, in the eyes of anyone who came looking into her bag. 

They meant nothing. If they had meant anything, she would have mentioned them long before now – used them against him, used them to manipulate him. They had meant nothing to her. 

But as he gripped the bottle in his hand, moving toward the door, he looked back at the scattering of folded pages spread out over the woven cover of her bed. The easy answer seemed most likely. But she had kept the letters – his letters. 

As he neared the door, he found himself slowing, still staring at the letters. Still trying to accept that they meant nothing. 

He was staring at them as he turned the doorknob and opened the door, still staring at them has he took a step out the door – and walked right into Chris. 

"Looking for you," Chris said, his voice low and even. "Nathan was getting anxious – Maude's starting to come around. Not there yet, but making noises and moving some."

Ezra nodded, holding up the bottle. "I have it – let's get it back to him." But as he made to move past Chris, he found himself looking back that one last time, to see the packets of pages on the bed. 

"You find anything we need to know?" Chris asked, not moving as Ezra pushed against him. He was looking past Ezra, into the room – toward the letters. 

Ezra looked at Chris, moving to stand between him and Maude's bed. "Nothing that impacts upon her illness – except this." He held up the bottle, trying to block Chris' view even more. "It's a cocaine tincture, as Nathan suggested."

Chris met Ezra's eyes, his gaze steady. "What did you find?"

Ezra blinked, glanced to the bottle, and frowned. But before he could speak, Chris stepped past him and walked to the bed, picking up one of the sets of papers. "These what I think they are?" he asked as he opened one of the sheaths of pages and looked at him. His eyes narrowed and he frowned as he looked back to Ezra. "Don't look like these have anything to do with her bottles, but – huh. Looks like she was pretty upset when she was reading them."

Ezra opened his mouth, prepared to argue with Chris, prepared to get him out of here, to get him away from Maude's things – until the last words permeated his brain. "What?" he asked. "Upset?"

Chris shrugged, letting the pages he had been looking at fold back up as he opened a second set. "Looks like someone was crying on them," he said, glancing at the second sheets he had open. "Ink's run where someone got it wet, and the way these pages look – well, I've seen tear splatters." He stiffened then, as if the words he'd just said caught him by surprise. 

He dropped the set of pages he was holding and rubbed his hand against his thigh as he looked at Ezra. "Best get back to Nathan. You ready?"

Ezra swallowed, unable to find words, so instead, he turned and walked out the door. He was relieved to hear the soft tread of Chris' boots behind him, then the thud as the door to Maude's room closed and the latch clicked back into place. 

They walked quickly back across the road, jogging up the stairs to Nathan's rooms where Nathan greeted them at the door, his face long and sour until he saw the bottle in Ezra's hand. "Bout damned time," he said, jerking it up and heading back inside, slamming the door in Ezra's face. 

Ezra glared after him even as he turned the knob of the door and marched himself inside – right back to his seat on the bed, which was where he was when Maude finally came back to awareness, sniffling and sighing and glaring at him. "Surely, dear boy," she started when she could talk, though her voice was raspy and unusually soft, "you understand that it was because of my worry for you. Any mother would faint dead away when her son was going on the way you were."

Ezra smiled at her, leaning in a little closer so he could kiss her cheek. "Of course, Mother," he said, "deepest apologies. I don't know what came over me. Perhaps it was the memory of all those letters I wrote during the war, the ones that you never saw."

She tilted her head to one side, holding his gaze. "Perhaps," she said slowly, "it was the idea that the boy I knew wasn't the one who was sending me letters." Her voice was low, so soft that Ezra could barely hear it. "Lord knows, I don't see how I could have raised a boy that sure of himself, one who could take that kind of care." 

Ezra took in a deep breath, then slowly, he nodded. "You had me worried, Mother," he said quietly. "I wasn't sure what had happened."

She smiled at him them, taking his hand in hers, her fingers warm now. "It happens to us all, dear boy," she said. "Perhaps we never really are sure what happened, or when. We just have to trust in what we hope we did right."

Through the closed door, Ezra heard the jingle of spurs and the scruff of boots on the raw wooden porch. Indeed, he thought, and some of us trust a little more than others.


End file.
